


Peace

by shykia1029



Series: Pre-Series Oneshots [4]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 20:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shykia1029/pseuds/shykia1029
Summary: Duncan is ten years old when he has his first fit.





	Peace

Duncan is ten years old when he has his first fit. 

Or so he’s told. He doesn’t remember it. But afterwards he sees the broken mirror and his sister’s terrified face so there’s no reason to doubt it. 

He wonders if not remembering means you don’t get the seven years of bad luck. 

  


Lilly’s best friend is in Duncan’s grade, so they end up spending a lot of time together. 

She’s smart like Lilly is and sweet like Lilly isn’t. She’s pretty, but he pushes that thought away because girls. Gross. 

Still, sometimes he sees her look at Lilly like she’s her hero and Duncan kind of wishes she would look at him like that. 

His soccer team and her soccer team have practice at the same time on the adjacent fields behind the middle school. Sometimes her mother doesn’t show to pick her up and she blushes and says she probably got held up at work and Duncan’s mother takes her to her house on their way back home without comment. 

  


Duncan supposes that Veronica is his friend and he’s had other friends, like Troy and Dick. 

But it’s not until he’s twelve years old that he makes his first Best Friend. 

He introduces himself to Logan and Logan doesn’t say _Kane like Kane Software?_ so Duncan doesn’t say _Echolls like Aaron Echolls?_ and that’s it, they’re friends. 

When he invites Logan over to swim one afternoon, there’s a long healing cut on his back, not clean like from a knife but jagged like you get from a strong, blunt blow. 

“Dude, what did you do?” he asks, and Logan grins.

“Surfing. Looks pretty badass, doesn’t it? I hear chicks love scars.”

Later he watches Logan watch Lilly and he wonders if Logan wonders if Lilly likes scars.

  


He thinks he might love Veronica. 

Not _love_ her, because the older guys talk in the locker room about feeling girls up and putting their tongues in terrifying places and he doesn’t even think about that with Veronica and if that’s _love_ it’s not what he’s thinking about when he drifts asleep at night. 

He thinks someday he’ll kiss her. Right now he really just wants to hold her hand. 

  


At Madison Sinclair’s birthday party Lilly kisses Logan. 

Duncan’s medication is really helping prevent his fits but seeing that does make his throat tighten a little and that’s enough like the beginning of a fit to get up with a shake of his head and walk away. 

Later, he hears that Veronica kissed that guy Jason from Duncan’s History class and his throat tightens again. He goes to the bathroom and splashes water on his face. 

When he comes out, he sees Logan sitting with Veronica, their legs in the hot tub, her head on his shoulder. 

He thinks he should be jealous when Logan tips his head down and briefly touches his lips to Veronica’s forehead but he’s surprised to find he isn’t. Maybe it’s because he knows Logan has such a huge, singular crush on Lilly. Maybe he just knows that Veronica deserves all the love she can get so if Logan loves her that can’t be a bad thing. 

It’s probably some combination of the two. 

  


In eighth grade the school holds a Sadie Hawkins Dance. Lilly doesn’t ask Logan. They just sort of end up going together without talking about it. 

Veronica doesn’t ask Duncan but Carrie Bishop does so he goes with her. 

At the dance, he ignores Carrie and leans on the wall behind the basketball hoop and watches Veronica and Logan and Lilly all dance together. As he waits impatiently for Carrie to get fed up and ditch him so he can join in, he wonders if they need him as much as he needs them. 

  


One day Logan comes to school with a black eye. 

Duncan knows he should stop asking because he always gets the same kind of bullshit response and being asked probably just makes Logan feel worse but sometimes he can’t stop himself. 

“What happened?”

And Logan’s face breaks into that wry smile, the one he only gives when he’s about to tell a hilarious and totally made up story excusing his latest injury. 

“Don’t lie,” Duncan says impulsively before Logan can open his mouth, and Logan’s face twists into a sneer. 

“Then don’t ask,” he snaps, and walks away. 

Duncan watches Logan go and he's mostly angry at Logan’s dad for hurting him and at Logan’s mom for letting it happen but a tiny part of him is _furious_ at Logan for thinking he deserves it. 

  


He wonders if Lilly knows. She must, she’s seen way more of Logan’s bare body than him. But what the hell is Lilly supposed to do about it?

He wonders if he could take Aaron Echolls if he tried.

Sure, he’s an action star, but that’s all fake. He probably couldn’t even shoot a real gun.

Duncan doesn’t know how to fight but Logan does, he’ll fight anyone except the guy who deserves it the most. They could probably take him together if they tried though. 

One time he goes to see Aaron’s latest crappy action flick with his family because Logan never wants to go see his dad’s movies. Aaron’s character is a jerk with a heart of gold and the excuse that his father was violent and abusive. 

When Aaron’s character quietly confesses this to his forgettable love interest on screen, Duncan starts laughing and can’t stop. He laughs and laughs until the other the other theatergoers glare and his mother pushes him up out of his seat and hisses that he needs to leave if he can’t control himself. 

In the lobby he keeps laughing and distantly worries that it’s going to turn into another fit but it doesn’t, he slowly calms down and buys himself an Icee and makes it back into the theater for the forgettable love interest’s death and the cheesy-yet-bittersweet ending.

  


It turns out Duncan really does _love_ Veronica. 

He loves her hair and her eyes and her smile. 

He loves that sometimes when he holds her hand it’s like he’s on a boat surrounded by stormy, crashing waves but he knows he’ll be okay because he has an anchor. 

He loves that he can look into the future and still see them exactly how they are now. Some people would probably find that boring and he supposes they’ll change in some ways, they’ll get older and one day have sex and maybe even get married. But the two of them, that connection he feels between them, will never change. 

He loves how she’s the only one who makes him feel completely at peace. 

  


The night of homecoming when they walk on the beach, Logan kisses Veronica at Lilly’s insistence and Duncan’s lack of objection. 

He doesn’t know why but he does watch, and something stirs in the pit of his stomach. Because he’s kissed Veronica so many times and in so many ways but somehow Logan is kissing her in a way Duncan never has. He can’t put a label on it. He doesn’t even know if it’s better than the way Duncan kisses her. 

When it’s his turn he tries to kiss Veronica in that way he can’t even label but he doesn’t think he succeeds. 

Still, Veronica declares him the winner and even though that was the expected answer it makes him smile. 

  


All four of them are grounded but Duncan and Lilly are grounded together, which means they’re not bored but they’re constantly getting on each other’s nerves. 

“Would you turn that off?” Lilly yells from her room next to his. “Or just use the TV in the living room, Jesus.” 

Duncan glares at the wall and turns the volume up on the college basketball game he doesn’t even care that much about. He thinks about how much he just wants to call Veronica. 

She appears in the doorway and throws one of her stupid pink pillows at him. 

“Dick,” she says, but there isn’t much venom behind it and she follows by flopping down on his bed next to him. “Veronica says hi.” 

It takes him a second to register her words. 

“Didn’t mom take away your phone too?” 

She laughs and reaches down her shirt and pulls a flip phone out of her bra. “You think I only have the one phone?” 

He tries to ignore where the phone was moments prior and grabs for it, but she jumps away so it’s out of his reach. 

“Say please.” 

“Please, Lilly?” he says, exasperated but not particularly surprised. 

“Now give me fifty bucks.” 

“Come on.”

She smirks at him for a few more seconds, then tosses the phone to him. He scrambles to catch it. 

“The number for the one I got her is in there,” she says, turning to leave. “If mom finds it it’s all you, and I need it back tonight so Logan and I can have phone sex.”

“I hate you,” he calls after her as she exits the room. 

“You love me,” she says, and the door closes behind her. 

  


When his mother tells him Veronica might be his half-sister, Duncan momentarily wonders if his fits have started to include auditory hallucinations. 

Then he wonders if his mother would really be so desperate to break them up that she’d come up with a story this insane to do it. 

Finally, after dismissing these two possibilities, the urge to throw up and the urge to cry engage in such a bitter fight that he ends up doing neither. He just sits there next to his mother and blinks. 

  


The next day at school, he thinks that he should talk to Veronica. He should probably let her down easy, tell her he isn’t ready for this much commitment or some bullshit like that. 

Or maybe he should be a total asshole and tell her it's because she won’t have sex with him. That would probably hurt her more but make it easier for her to get over him and that’s what he wants, right? For her to get over him so he can get over her? 

But then he sees her and what he _wants_ is to hold her and breathe in her sweet-smelling hair and never let go, hold on to his anchor so he can never get pulled off into that storm. He wants to freeze the rest of the world so there’s nobody but them and they can just _be_ together in peace. 

And his mother’s voice pounds in his head, those two words over and over.

_Your sister your sister your sister your sister_

And all he can bring himself to do is walk past her and ignore her greeting and try desperately not to meet her eyes. 

  


Duncan is sixteen when his sister is murdered. 

  


He’s the one who finds her. He doesn’t remember it. The last thing he remembers is getting home from soccer practice and opening the sliding glass door out to the pool and shielding his eyes from the harsh light of the sun reflecting off the water. 

The next thing he remembers is sitting in his living room with his parents, wearing new clothes and listening to Veronica’s father ask him pointed questions he doesn’t have the answers to. 

It’s probably a good thing. His last memory of Lilly isn’t finding her limp and bloody by the pool. It’s earlier that morning when she had let for the pep squad car wash and wished him goodbye with a flick of her hand and a “Later, Donut!” 

He kind of gets why Sheriff Mars starts off suspecting his father. He doesn’t believe his father is capable of murder but even he can see that his parents are holding something back. Still, he’s sure it’s something totally unrelated that’s just super embarrassing or bad for the company or whatever. He’s sure they don’t actually know anything about the murder. 

In the darkest corner of his mind, though, he thinks that maybe they do know something. And he thinks maybe what they do know is that he’s the one who did it. 

  


Sometimes Duncan will sit at the lunch table, picking at his food and watching Veronica pretend not to see them. He’s not even really listening most of the time but sometimes Logan will say something particularly vicious or blatantly untrue about Veronica and he’ll look down at the delivery pizza his Pirate Points allows him and he'll think _Lilly would be so disappointed in us._


End file.
